MENA Mashup: Kobane, ISIS, and our MIC

Under pressure from the European Union, a few years ago the Turks reduced the decade of oppression on their Kurdish people. Even Erdogan, the Turkish President, has been involved in direct talks with the PKK, perhaps to distract the world attention from his support of radical Islam. This is especially true for the Sunni Arab extremist Islamic state, ISIL. The Erdogan government trained and equipped these radical Islamic extremists and sent them to Syria. They started controlling territories in Syria and Iraq and were joined by tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs, including the Baathists from Mosul, Iraq to Raga, Syria.

For the Turks, it was not as important to go after the regime of Assad as it was to continue with the Arabization of Kurdistan of Syria by ISIL.

Their goal is to control and destroy the three Kurdish autonomous zones. Kobani is located in one of those zones. These autonomous zones are protected by the Popular Protection Unit, YPG. They are the Kurdish freedom fighters that affiliate themselves with the PKK. The truth is, if it weren’t for the PKK, the Turks would have wiped out the Kurdish identity in Kurdistan of Turkey. The PKK and YPG are Kurdish freedom fighters who have been labeled by the Turks as terrorist organizations.

The United States seems to have forgotten how America was liberated if it were not for their freedom fighters. They even refer to them as the founding fathers. Unfortunately, the United States is supporting the Turks and they also refer to PKK and YPG as terrorist organizations. For the last few weeks Kobani has been attacked by the terrorist Islamist fighters from the West, East and South. In the north the Turkish authorities are preventing supplies and reinforcements from getting to Kobani. The Turkish objective is for ISIL to force out all the Kurds from Syria and Arabitize their land. Their second objective is to massacre all the YPG. Those people who run for safety to the border will be held by the Turks in prison camps.

The U.S.-led air war in Syria has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy.

U.S. officials caution that the strikes are just the beginning of a broader strategy that could take years to carry out. But the anger that the attacks have stirred risks undermining the effort, analysts and rebels say.

The main beneficiary of the strikes so far appears to be President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have taken advantage of the shift in the military balance to step up attacks against the moderate rebels designated by President Obama as partners of the United States in the war against extremists. {…}

The strikes are not unpopular among ordinary people in Raqqah, who yearn for an end to the militants’ harsh rule, said another resident interviewed on a visit to Turkey. He also spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is afraid. Since the U.S.-led attacks began, Syrian government airstrikes have stopped, he said.

“The big difference between the coalition strikes and the Assad strikes is that the coalition strikes are accurate and they only hit the Islamic State,” he said, speaking during a visit to relatives. “The Assad strikes only kill civilians.”

…One could say we have a mix of “known unknowns” and even more “unknown unknowns” to use the convoluted language of former U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who learned first-hand the costs of faulty intel following the Iraq invasion in 2003.

This is not an argument against Canada’s newest armed mission. I feel a case can be made that there is a real risk of ISIS-led genocide in the region that requires outside intervention.

But if we are going to engage we should be doing so with enormous care, and regard our government’s claims to be well informed about the combat reality with the deepest suspicion. {…}

Take even the assessment of ISIS’s strength. The U.S. estimates sound like they’re arrived at by CIA analysts throwing darts at a numbers board.

Back in July, ISIS was estimated at around 10,000 to 12,000 jihadists, but within the past two weeks estimates have suddenly soared into the 20,000 to 30,000 range.

As if that swing was not disconcerting enough, the White House and U.S. intelligence community have been blaming each other for being essentially out to lunch over the entire ISIS threat.

President Barack Obama recently claimed that U.S. intelligence downright missed ISIS’s growing strength last winter, when it emerged from its opposition role to Syria’s Assad regime into what some now call the most supremely brutal guerrilla movement in the world.

To compound that, Obama noted that his spies also missed the catastrophic decay within the large and costly Iraq military, which let ISIS capture enough sophisticated, mostly U.S.-supplied weaponry to threaten the collapse of Iraq itself.

So if we are to believe Obama, we are in this war today largely thanks to the woeful record of the key intelligence networks that we must rely on for military success in future.

Fear sells, violence sells, war sells. The mainstream press just sold another American war

…Why has the media pushed the Obama administration’s war frame instead of playing the role of skeptic by questioning official assertions, insisting for corroboration on “anonymous leaks” and seeking alternative points of view? After years of government lies – from claims of WMDs in Iraq to zero civilian casualties in drone strikes – you’d think the members of the fourth estate would have learned a lesson.

But the mainstream US media plays the role of government lapdog more than watchdog.

Let’s face it: fear sells, violence sells, war sells. The vicious Isis beheadings, discussed ad infinitum, attracted large audiences. So did talk about exploding toothpaste. People whipped into a state of fear always want to know more.